I just finished writing a neat little application that lets you calculate pi to lots and lots of digits. It's pretty quick and easy to use... just enter the number of digits you want, and watch it go! Sure, you could go to dozens of places on the web and download pi pre-calculated to millions of places, but that's nowhere near as much fun as doing it yourself on your very own computer. I've calculated a million digits so far... are you patient enough to do more?
Important Acknowledgements: The majority of this pi calculation 'engine' comes from a great little command line app written by Roy Williams. I found his app a few years ago, and wanted to experiment with it to figure out how it worked. I ended up making a nice GUI for it that would let you keep track of the calculation's progress, time remaining, etc. That's how this application came about. More fun info/links about pi (as well as the original code I used to create this app) can be found at Roy's pi page.
The app should be self-explanatory and easy to use. Be sure to check it out the "About" box for some extra info about how it works & why I wrote it. Give it a try and let me know what you think... Happy Calculating!
Do not worry if your browser gives you some security warnings about running unknown .EXE's... I promise that this application is safe to use. If you have any problems downloading or running PiCalc, please let me know. As always, I welcome comments or suggestions.
I get lots of requests for the source code, so I've included a link to it, below. It's written for Microsoft VC++ 6.0, but it should be straightforward to port to other platforms / compilers. There are two important files: Pi.cpp is the heart of the pi calculation engine. PiCalcDlg.cpp controls the user interface, and tries to estimate time remaining. If you have questions about the code, feel free to send me an email. If I have some time (and if you ask nicely) I'd be happy to try to answer your questions.
